


And In That Moment You Were Home (With Me)

by myheroesrbands



Series: BakodaFleetWeek 2020 [5]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: BakodaFleetWeek, Bakodafleetweek 2020, M/M, Separations and Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-01
Updated: 2020-08-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:15:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25645648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myheroesrbands/pseuds/myheroesrbands
Summary: And if it meant that Hakoda would stop crying right now, about a comment Bato didn’t even remember making, then Bato would endure any type of pain that anyone wanted to put him through. No matter the price.
Relationships: Bato/Hakoda (Avatar)
Series: BakodaFleetWeek 2020 [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1852546
Comments: 9
Kudos: 124
Collections: Bakoda Fleet Week 2020





	And In That Moment You Were Home (With Me)

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so so sorry this is so late. I really had a crisis over the direction of this prompt (and this fic) but I do still hope it is enjoyable. Please let me know what you all think!

Bato wasn’t fully conscious when he said it. In fact, he didn’t know where he was at all. The only thing he registered was Hakoda’s face above his own, the cot his back was on, and the vague smell of perfumes. He heard Hakoda’s voice say “...have to leave you… want to but I have to” and he was slurring when he responded but the words left him anyway. 

“Because that’s what you’re best at right? Leaving?” 

And with that, he was unconscious again. He was only aware that he had used all of his strength to get those words out.

He remained oblivious to their impact. 

His eyes fluttered open eventually and as his brain caught up with his line of sight, he saw several women in the room that he was in. One of the women was working on something on his left arm (he might have felt tightening of a cloth? He didn’t want to look down and check). Another woman was mixing something in a jar not far from where he was lying. There were three? No, four more women working around the room. He sounded a grunt and they all faced him. 

“I’m sorry but, who are you all?” He watched the women share a glance between each other, and he felt a permanent knot settle in his stomach. Whatever his reason for being with these women, he knew he wouldn’t like it. 

“You were injured in battle. Your friend brought you here to our Abbey to care for you while you recover,” the woman nearest to him spoke. Her voice was shaky, and she seemed to have an aura of wisdom well beyond his years. She looked about 20 years older than him and smelled like she’d been roaming a nearby garden. He wouldn’t know what flowers, but he knew they smelled amazing. 

“Injured?” he questioned and from his lying position, tilted his head to look down on the left side of his body. It was bandaged all over, and he could now register the tickling sensation that made him want to scratch the bandages. He resisted the urge. 

“You have very severe burns covering the left side of your body and your stomach. You were lucky,” the wise-looking woman stood as she spoke and ushered the other women out. His eyes followed her as she moved from his side to standing at the end of the cot where he was laying. “If your friend had waited  _ any  _ longer, you would have lost complete mobility. For now, you will not want to move your left arm too much. It may strain the muscles and cause further damage.” He nodded solemnly, soaking in all the information. 

“Do you have water?” he asked softly, letting himself slide into his now downturn feelings. This was a moment of complete weakness for him and with Hakoda nowhere in sight, it was better he let himself feel like this now than he does it in front of the other warriors. 

The woman, whose white robes moved airily behind her as she moved to retrieve the water, spoke again. “Your friend said that when they reach the halfway point to the next earth kingdom town, you will get a letter leading you there. We are counting on your recovery taking three to four weeks.” Bato groaned as he very slowly sat up, with the help of the woman, to drink a cup of water. 

“Three to four weeks?” he asked after drinking the water.  _ Three to four weeks? What the hell? How is Hakoda going to last that long?  _ Bato knew that last thought was unfair, Hakoda had gone plenty of time without Bato at his side (more than once). But he couldn’t help but have an overwhelming sense of  _ being needed. _

“Yes,” she responded calmly. Bato sighed and rested his body back against the comforting bed under his body. 

This would be a long three to four weeks.

***

Hakoda couldn’t sleep. He couldn’t stomach half a barrel of sea prunes. He was trying to hold it together for the other warriors but Hakoda  _ knew  _ his head was still at the abbey. The abbey where Bato had said… He knew the man was delirious when he said them, but Bato’s words kept eating at him.  _ That’s the one thing you’re good at. The one thing. Leaving.  _

Had he left behind the people he loved so much that the one person he thought would stick with him through it all thought he wouldn’t? 

He groaned to himself. They were sailing to the rendezvous point but had been docking their boats at coastal cities. They’d stopped at three so far, and had run Fire Nation troops out of one. They were successful (but not as successful as they would have been with their Chief at his best).

Some warriors were beginning to suspect that he and Bato were together. Romantically. Which wasn’t untrue, but  _ that  _ wasn’t what had been eating at him. 

Sleep, like it did most nights, was escaping him, so he decided to head to the main deck to see the night sky. 

“Almost at the nearest port Chief!” He heard the Captain yell and he nodded stiffly. Hakoda moved to the edge on the starboard side of the boat and shifted his eyes up to the sky. The constellations, as beautiful as they always were, were nothing compared to the Aurora lights at the South Pole and Hakoda wished for nothing more than to actually be  _ there  _ with Bato. Looking at the lights. Watching them change colors. Watching them move. Watching Bato watch the lights. 

He shook his head and sighed down at the water. A tear slipped from his eye and was lost at sea. 

Almost like how his heart felt as Bato sat in that Abbey recovering, never knowing how his words had affected Hakoda. 

***

Bato and the sisters were genuinely surprised at just how quickly he recovered. They’d planned on his recovery taking three to four weeks, but in two and a half weeks his body was almost back to full mobility. 

Just as he realized he had increased his mobility at such an alarming rate, he learned that gaining his mobility back so quickly (and the manner through which he regained it) opened the doorway to stiffened joints and muscles that were prone to freezing up. Some nights when he stirred his sea prunes, his left hand would freeze up, and he’d have to pause his stirring to cradle the hand. Not wanting to disturb the sisters, Bato would wait the pain out, quietly suffering. 

The thing was that quiet suffering wasn’t new to him. 

When Kya died, Bato stepped up to take care of Hakoda and the kids. He put his own grieving aside to care for Hakoda. [Because what  _ wouldn’t  _ you do for the person you loved?] And although Hakoda was grateful for all the help that Bato provided, it was blatantly clear that Bato hadn’t been taking care of himself. Hakoda knew Bato wouldn’t talk about it, so he watched the man build up walls and it took years but Bato was finally tearing some of them down. 

And when he and Hakoda first acted on the  _ thing  _ between them, he suffered as he had to watch Hakoda go on about his day as if he never wanted to hold the other man. To kiss away his worries. To reassure him with more than pats on the shoulder. 

It’d been a few days since he’d seen the Avatar, Sokka, and Katara, but he had finally begun making his way to the rendezvous point. He had to stop to eat dinner and as he ate, he reminisced on the times when he and Hakoda had shared nights alone, watching the fire burn out as they exchanged soft words about the things happening to them.

He sighed at the memories, wishing more than anything that he could be with Hakoda — be by his side, be in his arms, be  _ near  _ him. 

***

“Do you remember?” Hakoda whispered that night — the night he returned to the tribe. Bato had filled Hakoda in on the status of ~~their~~ his kids, and they were now in the Chief’s tent as the moon shone brightly over their camp. Hakoda was staring into the fire that was lowly burning behind Bato’s head, watching the flames dance around the air. 

“Remember what exactly?” Bato asked, curious. He’d only been back for a day but the way they’d been glued at the hip the entire time suggested they’d never actually been apart. The warriors just settled on believing the two missed each other so much and while that was the truth, it didn’t  _ begin  _ to encompass just  _ how much  _ they had missed each other. 

Hakoda had, in a rush, laid out his own bedroll and an extra he kept in his tent for whenever someone came into his tent in the middle of the night so the two were almost on top of each other — Hakoda and Bato’s bodies separated by less than an arm-length’s space. Bato was laying on the extra roll, watching Hakoda who was laying on his back looking up at the roof of the tent.

“What you said to me before I had to leave you in the Abbey,” he whispered and Bato’s eyebrow’s furrowed. He’d only rarely seen Hakoda actually timid in his presence — it’d been a recurrence after he’d pulled himself out of the slump he fell into when Kya died.

Bato used his left hand to rest it on Hakoda’s chest, right above his heart. Basking in the silence, Hakoda gained control over his breathing before locking eyes with the taller man. “Is it true that I always leave?” 

The hand that was resting on Hakoda’s chest flinched away as though it had been burned and Bato sat up in a rush. The sudden movement caused Bato to feel a dull ache begin in the back of his palm. He ignored it in favor of staring Hakoda down. 

“Koda, I didn’t,” his voice came out as a whisper and Hakoda simply turned his head away from Bato. 

“Tell me.” Hakoda really couldn’t hide anything from Bato, so he immediately knew the man was holding back tears when his words came out stiff and almost as an order. 

“No,” Bato said firmly. His head was swimming and through the rapid beating of his heart and the aching pains now rising from his wrist to his elbow, Bato felt as if he’d been lit on fire for the second time in his life — out of control and aching. 

“You’ve  _ never  _ left.”

“But I did!” Hakoda sat up quickly. His hair moving wildly behind him as he yelled and moved his body shakily. “I left Sokka and Katara in the South. I left you in the Abbey. I left Kya in our house. I left my dad,” he couldn’t continue as his rant was interrupted by the abrupt sob that escaped his lips. Bato sighed to himself before reaching to pull Hakoda in his arms. 

“You did all of that for the good of the tribe, Hakoda. You did it so the kids could see another day. So the elders could boss you around for another day. So that there would  _ be  _ elders to boss you around.”

Hakoda continued to sob into Bato’s chest, a chorus of “no no no’s” escaping his lips. Bato did what he always did — he held him through it. He kissed his forehead. He held his hair back. He rubbed hands up and down his back. 

He ignored his own pain.

And if it meant that Hakoda would stop crying right now, about a comment Bato didn’t even remember making, then Bato would endure any type of pain that anyone wanted to put him through. No matter the price. 

Until then, Bato held Hakoda through the night. Eventually his own pain subsided and Hakoda’s sobs diminished to small whimpers. And before the sun arose in the morning, he slipped out of the Chief’s tent — intent on keeping their night together (just as he had done the million previous times) a secret between themselves. 


End file.
